Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 5 February 2025
794. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Minister for Justice for an update from the Courts Service on the progress of the e-probate project under the Courts Modernisation Programme; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [2347/25]
View answerAs the Deputy is aware, as Minister for Justice, I have no role in the exercise of Probate functions.
The Probate Office is an office of the High Court. Management of the courts is the responsibility of the judiciary and Courts Service, which are independent in exercising their functions under the Courts Service Act 1998 and given the separation of powers in the Constitution. Probate functions are also carried out by County Registrars at District Probate Registries in 14 provincial court offices.
The Probate General Office and Rules Office in Dublin is open to the legal profession and the general public every morning, Monday to Friday, to facilitate general enquiries, filing of court applications, Probate Officer Orders and caveats.
Last July, the Report of the Expert Group on Conveyancing and Probate was approved and published by Government. This Group was established in December 2023, to carry out a review of current conveyancing and probate processes. The Group made recommendations on changes to both processes, to make them more efficient and streamlined. An Implementation Group was also established to ensure oversight and delivery and its first meeting took place on 23 September 2024.
I am happy to report that great progress has been made to reduce probate processing times. The average time (nationwide) for probate applications to complete is down from 22 weeks at the start of 2024 to 11 weeks at year end, with Dublin seeing a drop from 25 weeks to 7 weeks over the same period.
Furthermore, I am informed that the eProbate project referred to by the Deputy is well underway. This project seeks to digitally transform back-office probate operations, to provide an online portal supporting the digital submission of applications, and to improve the provision of probate information online via the courts.ie website.
A new plain language information site was launched on courts.ie to help applicants and solicitors in navigate the probate process. The new site has seen a 38% increase in traffic since it was launched in 2024.
The eProbate project will deploy of a modern back office-system in the regional probate registries in the coming months. This will be quickly followed by a public launch of an online facility to submit and track applications for probate over the course of the summer.
The public facing portal will act as a single point of contact for users to submit and track their applications through the entire process. The electronic submission of applications through the online portal, combined with automated validation of key information at submission time will enable faster and more efficient processing of applications, with the aim of reducing processing times.
